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Time to Retire 'Denier'

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Time to Retire 'Denier'

In Charles Krauthammer's May 30 must-read column, "Carbon Chastity,"
he rightly lambastes environmentalists as resurrected
communists/socialists who have latched on to the environment and
climate change as a means to advance their anti-people social agenda.

The specific occasion for his justifiable outrage is a recent
proposal by a British parliamentary committee to institute a personal
carbon ration card for every citizen.

The plan would place limits on food and energy consumption in the
form of credits not to be exceeded — except through the potential for
heavy-carbon users, often the wealthy, to purchase credits from
lower-carbon users, often the less wealthy. In other words, their
answer to global warming is wealth redistribution.

Though I thoroughly endorse Krauthammer's condemnation of the plan,
I have to take issue with his adoption of loaded terms straight out of
the green lexicon to argue his point.

In trying to position his agnosticism on whether man-made CO2
emissions are actually cause for concern, his column begins: "I am not
a global warming believer. I am not a global warming denier."

The term "denier" is the environmentalists' preferred means of
tar-and-feathering anyone who dares question climate alarmism — a key
tactic in their effort to dupe the nation into consuming the green
Kool-Aid.

Environmentalists have convinced many in the mainstream media that
skepticism toward the very shaky science behind global warming alarmism
is akin to the indescribeably creepy views of anti-Semitics who deny
that the Holocaust occurred.

One event is an indisputable historical fact of hideous dimensions;
the prophesied specter of catastrophic global warming, however, is just
a politically driven fear scenario based on unreliable computer models
and the wishful bending of the laws of climate physics.

There is no comparison.

Can anyone reasonably equate, say, the 31,000 U.S. scientists,
engineers and physicians who recently signed a petition against global
warming alarmism — including Princeton theoretical physicist Freeman
Dyson and Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Richard
Lindzen — with the likes of neo-Nazis and Iranian leader Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who constantly calls for Israel's destruction?

Surely Krauthammer doesn't intend to make any such equation, but his
adoption of the greens' most effective word weaponry nonetheless plays
into their thought-shaping rhetoric.

Even when embedded in an argument contrary to green policies, the
word "denier" still demonizes by summoning the vile immorality of those
who would deny crimes against humanity.

One also could build a case against man's "carbon footprint,"
another fiendishly effective green-sponsored image and a term
Krauthammer uses matter-of-factly even as he logically details the
possibility that Earth's own massive outpouring of CO2 very well may
dwarf man-made carbon output into total irrelevance.

Let's consider a few facts.

CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas in the atmosphere that is measured in parts per million, or ppm. The vast majority of CO2 emissions, about 97 percent, comes from Mother Nature.

CO2 is nowhere near the most important greenhouse gas; water vapor
holds that distinction. An astounding 99.9 percent of Earth's
greenhouse gas effect has nothing to do with manmade CO2 emissions.

If that's not enough, we can look at graphs of the historical relationship
between carbon dioxide and global temperature. Ice core data going back
650,000 years show that global temperatures increase before CO2 levels.
Data from the 20th century indicate no particular relationship between
CO2 emissions and global temperature.

Finally, there is no scientific proof that the current level of
atmospheric CO2 or that levels projected by the United Nations — about
700 ppm by 2095 if no greenhouse gas regulations are put in place — has
or will cause any harm to the environment.

Alarmist gloom-and-doom forecasts also are based on nothing more
than the rankest speculation dressed up as computer models that remain
wholly unverifiable.

Yet, despite all this lack of evidence, the solitary term "man's
carbon footprint" manages to concretize the notion of mankind producing
indelible damage upon the Earth while in the process of stampeding its
flora and fauna.

For any effective critique of global warming hysteria, we have to
move beyond these powerful yet baseless buzz words that undermine any
rational case in which they are found.